Haile Gebrselassie Returns to the Olympic Stage

The Emperor in His Palace

Only Kenya’s great marathon world-record holder Paul Tergat refused to capitulate. The pair fought desperate battles in Atlanta and Sydney that will remain epics in Olympic history, but the result was the same each time. Gebrselassie’s superior finishing speed and his hunger to win held the Kenyan off. Some would suggest the defeats hastened Tergat’s move to the marathon.

Today the Kenyans have become less a threat than his fellow countrymen. In an unprecedented finish at last summer’s World Championships in Paris, the Ethiopians claimed all three medals in the 10,000m, but it was the 21-year-old sensation Kenenisa Bekele who prevailed in the last lap. Gebrselassie was relegated to silver.

The younger man had also beaten Gebrselassie in the Golden League 5,000m in Rome and in Hengelo over 10,000m. The rivalry has further intensified, with some observers feeling that Bekele lacks respect for his mentor. During the recent indoor season Bekele took Gebrselassie’s 5,000m world record in Birmingham, becoming the first man under 12:50 indoors with his 12:49.60. What went unnoticed by the sell-out crowd was that Bekele had used Gebrselassie’s preferred pacemaker, Martin Keino, son of the legendary Kip Keino, to break the record. Yet he did so with Gebrselassie’s blessing.

"To tell you the truth," Gebrselassie says, "I don’t want to [emphasize] the rivalry between [Kenenisa] and me because we are from the same country, we have the same manager, the same coach, and if you go back, we come from the same area."

"People are always looking. I have to be careful—if I make a mistake in Ethiopia the Ethiopians might say I am trying to be selfish: ‘he wants to win all the time.’ That’s why I really don’t want to compete against him every time. At the Olympics what can I do? Imagine what happens at the last lap of the race when we come neck to neck? The best way is not to compete.

"Kenenisa is getting very strong and gradually, you see, he is going up and up and I am going a bit down and down. This is normal. I am not blaming myself or anyone else. This is a reality I have to accept. Instead of trying to stay, I will move to the marathon."

Gebrselassie has said that until he wins the Olympic marathon—as Abebe Bikila, Mamo Wolde, Fatuma Roba, and Gezahegne Abera have done—his career will not be complete in the eyes of his countrymen. Such is the tradition of marathoning in Ethiopia.

The marathon is, however, a distance fraught with danger and with uncertainty. Gebrselassie attempted his first serious marathon in London two years ago, when he helped push Khalid Khannouchi to a world record of 2:05:38. He finished in a very good 2:06:35 for third place, but eight months later he was still not fully recovered.

Father and Friend

Gebrselassie’s manager, Dutchman Jos Hermens, carefully nurtures his athlete, racing him infrequently and negotiating appearance fees upward of $100,000. The two have been together since Gebrselassie was a teenager. Trust is the foundation of their relationship. Hermens’s company, Global Sports Communications, represents more than 100 athletes, including 16 current Olympic medalists, but Gebrselassie is special.

"We are everything to each other," Hermens declares. "He is a friend, but in the beginning I was more like a father to him. But now he is 30, and he is grown up and he doesn’t need a father anymore.

"We have a very wonderful friendship. I have to be careful, of course, because I work with a lot of athletes, and you don’t want to discriminate against anybody. But for me there’s not many people that I have that relationship with. It goes both ways. It’s an honor and a pleasure to work with him."

"He sees everything in the news and on the Internet—he knew her from running in Hengelo. He says, ‘please make sure you go to the funeral and bring flowers from me.’ There’s no other athlete that thinks like that," Hermens says, shaking his head.